Hall of Fame mailbag: Ichiro's missing vote, Beltrán's splits, and a Yes/No ballot system?

Ichiro misses unanimity by one vote! Apparently, you have some questions about that.

Carlos Beltran misses election for the third straight year! Should Jose Altuve be worried? We had 11 more players who were one-and-done! Why cant the writers vote for more than 10? I know the Baseball Hall of Fame election was last week.

But the aftermath sure did leave a lot of questions hanging in the frigid Cooperstown sky.

This is the Hall of Fame mailbag column I like to write every year that answers those questions.

Advertisement You had so many great ones, we had to divide this mailbag into two parts.

So stay tuned for part two on Thursday.

Im sorry if your question didnt make either column.

But here comes the first batch of questions that did.

Starting with a flurry of Ichiro Suzuki topics that were guaranteed to come flying at me.

Note: Questions have been edited for clarity and length.

Jayson, when will the BBWAA make it mandatory for vote results to be made public? Its ridiculous that professionals are still allowed to pull this agenda crap with their votes.

John S.

Hey John! I must be psychic.

I just had a hunch this question was coming.

So Im ready for you, my friend.

The first thing you should know is that the Baseball Writers Association of America isnt the culprit here.

Twice in the last decade or so, we voted to make all ballots public but the Hall of Fame directors had other ideas, by which I mean: Nope.

Sorry.

Not doing that.

So we did the best we could.

Theres now an addendum to the ballot that specifically asks every voter if they want to make their ballot public and most do.

Last year, 385 voters returned their ballots and more than 300 checked that box.

This year, Im told, 82 percent of the ballots will be made public.

Im sorry that about 100 of those arent revealed until more than a week after the election, but thats also a decision by the Hall.

Their thought process is that during election week, the talk should be about who got elected not about that frigging lunkhead who didnt vote for (lets pick a name at random here) Ichiro.

I get that logic.

I even get that not everyone wants to go public.

Ever visited social media? Every once in a while, Ive noticed, its not a real warm, nurturing kind of scene.

Vote shaming is a real thing.

So what are those 18 percent of our voters opting out of? The shaming.

Advertisement But now that Ive explained all that, you should also know that one voter youll never have to worry about transparency with is me.

As Ive written every year in my annual Hall ballot column, I believe that you deserve to know everything about my ballot how I voted, and why I voted that way .

If we cant defend our votes, we shouldnt be voting.

But for some reason, Im still not in charge! Would love to know who the coward was that didnt induct Ichiro.

Alex C.

The nationwide manhunt for Whoever That Was is rolling.

Im going to guess itll be just as futile as the search for that dastardly scoundrel who didnt vote for Derek Jeter five years ago or the three who left Ken Griffey Jr.

off their ballots nine years ago.

So brace yourself and get ready to cope with the reality that youll almost certainly never know.

But Alex, I have a follow-up question: Do you need to know who, or do you just need to know why? If its just why, heres an idea.

I did a lot of TV appearances from Cooperstown last week on MLB Network with my friends Brian Kenny, Joel Sherman and JP Morosi.

Obviously, we talked about this on and off the air.

Here was our best why-if-not-who brainstorm: Maybe someone could ask Whoever That Was to issue an explanation.

Then wed have the BBWAA or the Hall of Fame release it, while still protecting Whoever That Was from the kind of onslaught normally reserved for certain referees in Kansas City who dont think Josh Allen got that first down .

We were thinking you might at least get an explanation something like this: Im sorry that so many people are disappointed that I left Ichiro off my ballot.

I did that only because I knew he was getting elected and I couldnt handle the idea of NOT voting for Torii Hunter and having him fall off the ballot.

It never occurred to me that Id be the only voter who kept Ichiro from being unanimous.

...

Yada yada yada.

Would that make you feel any better? No, huh? Sorry! GO DEEPER Ichiro Suzuki wants to meet with Hall of Fame voter who didn't vote for him Can you please clarify something about the lone Ichiro holdout? Did this person turn in a ballot and not include Ichiro (meaning its one vote out of those who voted) or is it potentially someone who did not turn in their ballot (meaning its one person out of all who are eligible to vote)? Brian K.

Im all about clarification, Brian.

Here you go: There were 400 voters who received ballots.

Only six of the 400 didnt return those ballots.

But those six dont count in the same way that anyone who didnt show up in your town to vote in the local dogcatcher election wouldnt have their vote counted.

Advertisement On the other hand, if someone had returned a blank ballot with no players boxes checked that would have counted as a vote for no one.

Thats happened before.

But not this year.

So yes, that Ichiro holdout was someone who cast a ballot and voted for other players but didnt check the box next to Ichiros name.

As Ive mentioned earlier, we dont know why and there is probably a better chance youll find out who built Stonehenge than who didnt vote for Ichiro.

Why is there a 10-player limit for a ballot? Makes no sense to me to limit the number of players someone can vote for.

At least its not as bad as football.

Peter K.

Hey, Peter! Thanks for reminding people that at least our process is much more democratic than the other sports.

We dont get much credit for that, but Im with ya! I also agree that we should be allowed to vote for more than 10 players if we want to.

But when we asked the Hall a decade ago to expand that limit to 12, the board of directors said: Nah.

Were good.

So the Rule of 10 remains in effect .

So why is that a problem? The baseball writers would never elect 12 players a year ...

or even close.

Its hard enough to get 75 percent of us to agree on where to go to lunch, let alone who deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.

But thats not the issue.

Let me try to explain why we asked to raise that limit.

Im considered a Big Hall kind of voter, and even I wouldnt vote for 10 let alone more than 10 every year.

But ...

Some years, our ballots are so loaded that the 10-player limit causes problems that make everybody look bad.

Want me to list some of our recent one-and-done debacles? It bothers me that players like Kenny Lofton, Jim Edmonds, Johan Santana, Carlos Delgado, Jorge Posada and David Cone got knocked off our ballot after one year.

But check out the ballot the years they debuted.

Some of those ballots went 15 ...

16 ...

18 deserving players deep.

So no wonder those guys didnt get 5 percent of the vote.

Too many great players.

Not enough votes to keep everybody alive.

Advertisement Heres the way Id like to vote: Look at every name on that ballot and ask: Was this player a Hall of Famer, or not? And if I think he was, I should be able to vote for him every year.

But some years, the Rule of 10 disrupts that idealistic plan.

So the best solution would be The Yes/No System.

Go through the ballot and vote yes or no on everyone.

But you know who makes the rules? Not you.

And not me.

The Hall of Fame powers that be do that, and theyve told us they have no interest in that system.

The person who almost got in is Carlos Beltran.

Jayson, can you confirm that him not being voted in yet is 100 percent based on the (Astros) sign-stealing scandal? I feel this is a precursor to the inevitable Jose Altuve discussion in 10 years time.

Joseph E.

Joseph, youre onto something here.

On one hand, Beltran only missed getting elected by 19 votes .

On the other, he was polling at nearly 80 percent on Ryan Thibodauxs invaluable Baseball Hall of Fame Tracker before the election, then dropped by nearly 10 percentage points in the official voting results.

Thats a direct result of how badly he fared with the 166 voters who didnt reveal their ballots in advance.

Take a look.

(Source: Ryan Thibodauxs Hall of Fame Tracker) That 22.9 percent split was the second-largest divide of any player on this ballot, behind only Chase Utley (whose split was 51 percent/27 percent).

But when we dig deeper, you know what we find? That youre right about where those no votes were coming from.

My friend Jason Sardell is the most accurate Hall election analyst out there.

He can tell us where any players votes are coming from and where theyre not.

You know what group was least likely to vote for Beltran? The same voters who have a long track record as anti-PED voters.

They dont vote for Alex Rodriguez.

They dont vote for Manny Ramirez.

And only about one in three of them voted for Beltran in this election.

Advertisement It appears that voting bloc mostly views and treats any type of cheating the same.

But are those voters still open to persuasion on Beltran now that he finds himself on the verge of election? He flipped very few of them this year ...

so not necessarily! Will that same group balk at checking Altuves name someday, despite evidence that he was one of the 2017 Astros who was least involved in the Bang the Trash Cans Slowly scheme? My crystal ball is on the fritz this week, so who the heck knows? More Hall of Fame coverage GO DEEPER Five things we learned from the 2025 Baseball Hall of Fame election GO DEEPER Ichiro finds special joy in his place of peace, the Hall of Fame, which he's forever changed GO DEEPER Fourth outfielder? Slap hitter? Ichiro got to Cooperstown by silencing early skeptics GO DEEPER Baseball Hall of Fame tiers: Which active players are on course for Cooperstown? (Top photo of Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner in Cooperstown, N.Y.: New York Yankees / Getty Images).

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